Good afternoon, everyone. This is Scott again. A very warm welcome to all of you for this Nucleus Software Earnings Conference call for the quarter and year-end date on March 31, 2025. For discussions, we have here from the management team, Mr. Vishnu R. Dusad, our Managing Director, Mr. Parag Bhise, CEO and Executive Director, Mr. Anurag Mantri, COO and Executive Director, Mr. Suryaprakash Kanodia, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ashwani Arora, Senior Vice President, Mr. Ashish Khanna, Chief of Staff and Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Mukesh Bangia, Vice President, Mr. Abhishek Pallav, Vice President, Mr. Pradeep Malik, Vice President, Ms. Swati Patwardhan, Chief Human Resource Officer, and Mr. Tapan Jayaswal, Financial Controller. As you all are aware, Nucleus Software does not provide any specific revenue earnings guidance.
Anything which is said during this call, which may reflect the company's outlook for the future, or which may be construed as a forward-looking statement, must be reviewed in conjunction with the risks that the company faces. An audio and transcript of this call would be shortly available on the Investor section of the company's website, www.nucleussoftware.com. With this, we are now ready to begin with the opening comments on the performance of the company, and post that, we would be available for the question-and-answer session. With this, I now pass it over to Mr. Vishnu. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. A warm welcome to the investor call for the quarter and year-end date that occurs March 2025. We are thankful to you for your interest in Nucleus Software. It has been a year of building strength and delivering sustained value to our customers. We have been making steady progress in aligning our resources for customer success and are confident of increasing the value that we deliver. With those words, I'm handing over to Parag.
Thank you, sir. Welcome, everyone, to this quarter's call. A warm welcome to you. This quarter, as Mr. Vishnu mentioned, has been good for us. We managed to add three new levels in this quarter and also got some incremental support from our customers, existing customers, and we were able to achieve some significant milestones, and that is what is reflecting in our numbers. We continue our focus on our investments in technology as well as our people. That is going to be the continued focus for the entire year. Our lean journey, what we have been talking about, remains our focus, and we plan to take it to the next levels to derive maximum benefit. I will close with these remarks. Thank you very much. Over to Tapan for giving the financial update.
Yes, sir. Good afternoon, everyone. Highlights from financials are, our consolidated revenue for the quarter is at INR 228.9 crore, INR 205.7 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 10.3 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is INR 832.3 crore against INR 826.5 crore the previous year. Overall revenue in foreign currency, including Indian rupees revenue for the quarter, is $26.5 million, $24x 4 million quarter-on-quarter, and $25.3 million year-on-year. For the year, it is $98.5 million, $100.6 million for the previous year. Product revenue for the quarter is at INR 199.6 crore against INR 174.8 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 179.4 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is INR 713.8 crore against INR 711.4 crore for the previous year. Revenue from projects and services for the quarter is at INR 29.4 crore against INR 30.9 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 3.9 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is INR 118.5 crore against INR 115.1 crore the previous.
For expenses, cost of delivery, including cost of product development for the quarter, is 57.3% of revenue, 70.7% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and 63.5% of revenue year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 131.3 crore against INR 145.5 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 63.5 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is INR 568.7 crore, INR 511 crore for the previous year. For marketing and sales expenses for the quarter, it is 4.9% of revenue, 5.6% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and 3.3% year-on-year. In terms, this is INR 11.2 crore against INR 11.6 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 6.9 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is INR 36.1 crore, INR 6.6 crore the previous year. Revenue expenses for the quarter are 5.3% of revenue, 1.6% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and 5.7% year-on-year. In terms, this is INR 12.1 crore against INR 15.6 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 11.9 crore year-on-year. For the year, crore for the previous year.
EBITDA for the quarter is at INR 74.3 crore against INR 33 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 58 crore year-on-year. For the year, EBITDA is at INR 167.6 crore against INR 219.5 crore the previous year. Other income from investment and deposit is at INR 16.7 crore against INR 14.8 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 14 crore year-on-year. Total other income for the quarter is INR 16.6 crore against INR 15.6 crore quarter-on-quarter, INR 14.2 crore year-on-year. For the year, income from investment and deposit is at INR 64.8 crore against INR 48.1 crore for the previous year. Total other income for the year is INR 66.3 crore against INR 50.9 crore for the previous year. Total taxes are at INR 22.8 crore against INR 10 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 16.3 crore year-on-year. For the year, taxes are INR 76.1 crore against INR 64.2 crore in the previous year. Net profit is at INR 64.8 crore for the quarter against INR 35 crore for the quarter-on-year and INR 52.1 crore year-on-year.
For the year, INR 163 crore, INR 6 crore the previous year. The comprehensive income is at INR 2.2 crore for the quarter against INR 1.7 crore quarter-on-quarter year-on-year. For the year, it's at INR 2.4 crore against INR 1.9 crore in the previous year. Total comprehensive income, which includes net profit and other comprehensive income, is at INR 4.6 crore for the quarter against INR 33.3 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 46.1 crore year-on-year. For the year, it is at INR 159.4 crore, INR 93.6 crore in the previous year. For the quarter, it is at INR 24.6 as against INR 13.3 quarter-on-quarter and INR 19.5 year-on-year. For the year, it is at INR 61.4 against INR 71.6 in the previous year. In terms of foreign currency hedges, on 31st March 2025, we had $3.25 million of forward contracts at an average rate of 86.24. There is a mark-to-market gain of INR 0.06, which is taken to the hedging reserve in the balance sheet.
Revenue contribution from the top five clients for the quarter is 7.8% against 28.1% in the previous quarter. Total cash and cash equivalent as of 31st March 2025 is INR 877.3 crore against INR 877.9 crore as of 31st December 2024. This includes balance in current accounts of INR 50.5 crore, various schemes of mutual fund INR 597.4 crore, fixed deposits of INR 196.1 crore, investments in tax-free bonds of INR 33.3 crore. With regards to receivables, we are at INR 137.4 crore against INR 109 crore. In the quarter, there is a gross addition of fixed assets of INR 8.50 crore, consisting of tools, plant and machinery, fixtures, spares, and INR 0.08 crore bond equal to Poonam. The Tapan sir, sorry, say, voice is not audible. Hello. Hello. My update is complete. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. With this, we are now open for the question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on the telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star and one again. We have a first question from Rushabh Shah from Google Drop EMS.
Yeah. Hello. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, one of the questions I had in one of the few things in your company are the employees. So what has been the attrition rate over the years, and what kind of incentives do you provide so that they stick with us for a long period of time?
Our attrition for the last couple of years is our average is less than the industry average, substantially less than the industry average. Our voluntary plus involuntary attrition would be at around 11% and lesser. That is attrition. The second question was?
Measures you are taking?
In terms of measures that we are taking to retain, I think we have two focus areas. One is continuous engagement with our people. Our engagement pillars, when it comes to career growth and development, are very, very robust. There is a lot of focus on continuous improvement and development. The second part is on the experience. The voice of customer, internal voice of customer, is something that we keep channeling our energies and insights into. Arresting any discontent and tackling it before it reaches the resignation stage, that's something that we do proactively for retention. From an incentive perspective, our compensation structure has a component of variable bonus, which is linked to not just the individual performance but also linked to organization performance, which is paid out at the end of the year.
We encourage everybody to stay back so that they can have their fair share of earnings as well.
Okay. My second question is, in general terms, when a customer is in our pipeline, how long does it take to convert that customer into sales? What could be the possible reasons from the customer's end to delay the process?
Hi. Thanks for the question, Rushabh . This is Ashish Khanna. The typical sales cycle in the enterprise software is a little longer now. It typically varies from eight months to one and a half years, 18 months. It really depends upon the complexity and nature of the line of business they want to enable, right? What typically we are seeing now is that the main reason for delay is that IT has become, technology has become so important that it became a point of discussion at a board level, right? It is not just limited to the CTO or CIO. Now, the technology conversation and discussion is going up to the board level. There are a lot of iterations, a lot of conversation at that level also. This is positive also.
That's how we look at it because it becomes a very strategic subject, how to enable and have that technology empowerment at all levels so that the organization, the financial institution can grow steadily and serve the masses. To answer your question, typically the cycles are longer now. The real reason is primarily because the conversation goes up to the board level now.
Okay. So my last question is, in your number first, you mentioned that you have very strong basis for selecting the customer. So could you let us know?
That's right.
Yeah. Could you let us know what are those bases and why those bases are so important for you?
Sure. I mean, typically, for any customer, for any organization to select a customer, right, and vice versa, there are certain guidelines, parameters, governance frameworks which are built up at an organization level. I'll give you a very vague example, right? Anybody doing a business in financial space, and if we are not very clear about the business model, we don't want to give our software for that particular institution or for that particular business, right? Clarity has to be there. I think there is a robust framework for us to evaluate our specific prospect, right, including the governance, including the way they are, the kind of business they are doing, what's the regulatory view on that business. Keeping all these lenses enabled, we take a decision whether to continue with that particular prospect or not.
It's a robust framework at an organization level which we use to evaluate a particular prospect while considering that while investing our time and energy to convert the customer.
Fine sir. Thank you. I'll take that in.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Rahul Jain, Dolat Capital. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope my line is okay.
Yeah, that is.
Yeah. Firstly, we just begin with some bookkeeping questions. Actually, I missed, as usual, the voice was pretty low when the number was shared by Tapan. It would be very difficult to get the audible data. I could not hear that at all. The top five contribution was also very much.
Audible. Audible.
Tapan, could you repeat the number, please, and be loud on? Sir, which number do I have to repeat?
Audible. Tapan audible number.
Top five revenue percentage? Top five customers, revenue percentage?
Audible.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. Rahul, thanks for the question. The order book, which is pending as of today, at the end of the quarter, is INR 600 crore-plus. That is the order book on which we are sitting. In terms of the revenue from the top five customers, it is around 27.5%.
Did you mean to say 6,000? So the 600 plus was only for the product, or this is the overall?
This is overall. This includes products and services.
This number, if I'm right, was 700 plus in the previous quarter?
Yeah. I mean, the way it happens is we have an order book, and then the quarter goes. You would have seen that we have exhausted almost INR 228 crore in this quarter. Yeah. I mean, that is how it has happened.
Right. What would be the services part of this INR 6,000? That is INR 600 plus.
I would not be giving the exact number, but roughly around 14-15% of our revenue comes from services. This is indicative, but yeah, you can take a clue from that.
Right. Right. Okay. Now, there are a few observations in the current result. I think one important one was the mention of the three key imperatives that FIBM is fixed around: platform expansion, player product innovation, and global customer insight. If you could double-click on that, Parag or Vishnu R. Dusad, whichever you prefer. Thank you.
Yeah. If you could repeat the question.
Yeah. I'm just referring to our product release where we have said that going for the FIBMSX, we would be unlocking our potential, which is key imperatives, which were platform expansion, power product innovation, and global customer impact. If you could throw more light on this aspect.
Okay. Okay. In fact, we have our engineering head also, but I have first given some preliminary inputs, and if required, you can talk more about it. Essentially, you all know it is a time of AI-enabled now. I think we took our time to decide our AI strategy, but we are now clear in both our products, whether it is retail lending or transaction banking. We now have a list of use cases, a long list of use cases, which we want to build. In fact, we started building them with every release. Some use cases are getting rolled out. That is what was meant by that portion of the release, that is going to be the focus this year in relation to building our functionality and focusing on robustness. AI development is going to be the focus in the next year.
Sure. Sure. Just to understand your geographical dimensions of growth, what we saw is that India saw a big growth on a year-to-date basis. You mentioned developing new local wins. Some of these came in India geography and in the Miles area. What part of the revenue was led by Milestone? Milestone is largely led by new locals in that region, that growth in India.
Yeah. this is Surya here . The new logos that we got, this combination, we got in India, we got outside India as well. It's a combination. B, of the total revenue, the revenue which is related to Milestone or, let's say, product and implementation would be in the range of 12%-14% in this quarter. The rest is related to our services and the usual AMCs and AHS that we do.
Understood. Another geography that has been seeing some consistent improvement is Australia. You used to talk about the large potential here a couple of years back. Any color you could share in terms of how this geography is shaping up? Is it coming from AMC repricing on the existing customers, or do they have more straight expansion or new logos in this region?
Yeah. Thanks, Rahul. This is Ashish . Definitely, we talked about Australia. We talked about North America. All these geographies are very strategic and important for us. Australia is primarily getting sent in from multiple lenses. We are working closely with some of the strong players there, one from more than a decade and one from almost five years now, and some others who we are in touch with to innovate in that geography. A lot of traction is coming from that geography. Similarly, for North America, the last one and a half year, we were building a lot of you must have seen our LinkedIn and all. We were doing a lot of industry events. We are connecting a lot of stakeholders there.
We are, again, getting good traction because we see that the kind of an IP we have built, it has a strong potential to disrupt and to bring the right value to the end customer in that geography. Both geographies are looking potentially important and strategic for us.
Right. Ashish, if I brought you a valuable thing, the current growth in the Australian account could have come from our getting old relationships. Yes, there is a large potential pipeline. If you could clarify that part. Secondly, in North America, we are participating more. Is there a strategy because it's a very, very large market in terms of number of unique customers, a lot of community banks, mid-size banks? Is there an area that you have identified as our sweet spot in terms of the asset size or book size or any other cut that we are filtering that out?
Yeah. So Rahul, the first point on Australia, you are right. Your understanding is right that we have obviously two very happy customers, and then we have a strong pipeline in Australia as a region. On the North America side, we do have a strong strategy, a very focused strategy on a very specific line of business with a clear focus and a specific focus on the lending platform. Yeah. I mean, that's what I can share at least at this stage. We have a very specific focus approach for a line of business in North America as a region.
Khanna, I was more focusing trying to understand what within North America because it's geographically a large market. There are a lot of 3,000 banks which could be a potential customer for our product offering. Is it cut by geography or size of the bank, or it's all over the place right now?
Rahul, as I mentioned, we have a very strong strategy. We've got a very specific line of business and specific industry in that geography, right? I won't be able to share that specific right now, but we'll make a beginning wherever there is a strong possibility. We are seeing that traction already while we are engaging with some of the prospective customers. You are right. It's such a very, very vast and wide market, right? It's very complex also from every aspect, including regulatory. We are very clear where we want to go as an organization with all our strength, which matches with that opportunity which we foresee right now. We do have a very strong strategy in place, but yeah, time will tell because the geopolitical dynamics are such that it will be difficult for us to comment anything beyond this.
Yeah. I appreciate that, Pallav. Just one more element if Vishnu could add on it because as you said, you've been around for a very long period of time. We have seen all these Indian vendors trying to expand now, including names like Oracle that are now a U.S. company. We have seen very limited success by most of your competition, big and small alike. Is this right now at a marketing stage for us, and it's like we are building for a long-term potential here, or do you think it could be monetized on a one-, two-, three-year basis as well? Any color on that would be great. Thanks.
Yeah. Rahul, maybe I'll address it on behalf of the entire organization. The experience, really, the world we are in is very dynamic, right? As Parag also talked about, the way AI is changing things, the way things are unfolding, not just on a technology front, but also the geopolitical front. A lot of things are changing very dynamically and very fast nowadays, right? Past experience definitely helped, right? I think how do we see and prioritize our things as we go along and very fast in that process? I think that is going to set the game for us. That's what we can share at this stage.
We are definitely leveraging our past experience, but at the same time, we are bringing a lot of change internally to be more agile, more focused, and stronger as an organization with all our strength in place. That is what we can share at this stage.
I agree with Rahul.
Yeah. I think I just want to add two more things. Just to add to it, as an organization, our entire focus remains on the customer centricity and value that we can create for the prospect. During this journey, of course, as you rightly mentioned, this is the world of Uber. We have to be extremely cautious. At the same time, we know our strength, and we also know during our journey to the prospect that how we can create value. We go step by step with the right fundamentals in place and hopefully expect this to get into the results. Yeah.
Right. Thanks for sharing so much, Pallav, on that. Just last bit from my side, which will allow us to ask a question, is on the employee cost. This has seen some downtick with some kind of a revision reversal. That would have happened or any other aspect that you could talk about, including headcount or any distribution versus volume by the US company?
If I understood it right, you are talking about the employee count as well as the employee cost reduction that we are currently seeing, right? In terms of employees, we have added employees in the last quarter. We are seeing opportunity. We are seeing a space for investment in our technology, and that is the reason we are adding employees.
In terms of the reduced cost that you see, this is on account of the true up or true down of our various costs and provisions that we do towards the end of the year, primarily being on the employee side because for employees, what we have done at the beginning of the year, we have linked a part of the employees' compensation, available pay as Shafi was also mentioning, to the organization performance. Towards the end of the year, on the basis of the actual performance that we have seen, there is a true down that has happened in our employee cost. That is the reduction that we are seeing as part of the employee cost.
Right. I think this is a comment which some other people also suggested in the past. Given the kind of a staff moment that we observe in this cost trend, it would be better if we could give clarity on this as in the entering quarter so that we would know that this could otherwise, if you look at the Q4 performance, it looks shockingly different than the previous quarter in terms of cost as well as growth. The way I can understand, you can't time it, but cost, because we know there is a good probability that it would get unutilized on the provision side, some clarity on that aspect could be a great help for you. Thank you.
That's a good recommendation. We have taken a note of it. We will look at it, how we can handle it.
Generally, we have not observed this kind of a big delta. Maybe it depends upon the size of that provision versus the total cost. This kind of escalation, we do not see many of them. Thank you.
Okay. Okay. We can move to the next participant.
Thank you, sir. Next question. Next question comes from Mr. Mihir Manohar from Carnelian Asset Management.
Yeah. Thanks for giving the opportunity. I'm completely confident of numbers. I wanted to understand the operating profit because it went up from INR 33 crore to INR 74 crore in the last quarter. I mean, just increase with the growth. I mean, how much portion is coming from the reversal and how much portion is coming from licensing? If you can quantify that, that would be really helpful.
Sorry. I think you have to repeat the initial part of the question because I think we did some correction in between. Sorry for that.
Sure. Sure. And audible?
Yeah. You are audible now. Go ahead.
Yeah. Sure. So basically, the operating profit has gone up from INR 33 crore to INR 74 crore on a quarter-on-quarter basis. How much of it is coming from the provision reversal which you just talked about? Second thing, I mean, how much is coming from the license part of the piece? Generally, what happens is that license directly flows into the bottom line. I wanted to understand these two things.
Yeah. On account of provision reversal, the benefit is of ₹8.5 crore. See, most of the growth in the operating profit that you see is because of the growth in revenue that has happened. We being a product company, we do not see a proportionate rise in cost when we get our revenue up. That is the reason you would have seen that most of the revenue increase that we have experienced in this quarter is sitting as part of the profitability. In terms of, as I said, in terms of cost, ₹8.5 crore is on account of what I said. The remaining is the efficiency that we have been able to bring into the organization.
Understood. Sure. Sure. For INR 229 crore of revenue, which is there, how much was licensed on the INR 229 crore? Last quarter, INR 206 crore, how much was licensed over there?
The licensed revenue, including implementation, if counted together, contributes around 10-12% of our total revenue. You can count around 10-12% is contributed by license. The remaining is on account of the other factors.
Sure. Understood. Sir, if you could just break up the INR 820 crore, I mean, how much would be license implementation? How much would be AMC? That would be really helpful, sir.
That kind of detail, I fear we don't share. I mean, I have given you a rough breakup, but beyond that, it will be not possible for me to provide that breakup to you.
Okay. Sure. Sure. Understood. The second thing I'm a bit to understand in Europe and Middle East. So basically, Europe. Europe and Middle East, I mean, who are our top customers in that particular geography? I mean, is it tier one? I also understand that.
We have, if I talk about Middle East, we have top seven out of top ten customers, ten banks with us. Tier one banks, both tier one, tier two, they work with us. They leverage our enterprise software solutions to run their assets out of the business.
Sure. Understood. Europe?
Europe, we have a limited presence as of now. We have a specific set of customers who are using it. They are, again, tier one, but we do not have too many customers there as of now.
Understood. Sure. Sure. My last question was on the AI investment, sir. If you can quantify what is the amount, how much amount are you spending on a per-year basis? And what kind of products or what kind of solutions are you developing over here? Some use cases if you can provide clarity, that would be really helpful, sir.
Yeah, maybe you can address. Yeah. Good afternoon and hello to everyone. As far as AI initiative is part of our product R&D, and as mentioned in the start of the call, it comes as a strategic part of the initiative and a big taking care like that. It is not like a specific quota or sort of budget is there, but it is a large part of R&D that is there. Good part, we are investing into AI, and our strategy is to bring as many as AI use cases into implementations in the next couple of months, next couple of months and quarters, year after. As mentioned by Parag sir, we have already created a backlog. We have started burning it. Some of the capabilities are already rolled out. Some are in the pipeline and going to come in the next quarter.
It is like that. In a nutshell, there is sharp, very, very sharp focus on that. So is the investment.
Additionally, just to kind of add one more point, it is cutting across all the product lines. It is embedded in the day-to-day work of all the engineers. It is not something we are building out of box and then bringing it across. AI is now everything is getting re-skilled to AI, and we are enabling AI across all the product lines for Juneteenth.
Sure. Understood. I mean, what will be the total R&D spend for us, INR 60 crore s?
Total R&D spend. I mean, we do not define as such. Sure, maybe you want to take this question.
I'm sorry. I think there are also some questions in the line.
No. See, R&D cost of the total project to incur, R&D cost would be approximately 15%-18% of the total project to incur in a quarter.
Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Mahak Singhvi, an individual investor. Please go ahead and take questions.
Thank you for the opportunity. My question is, are we using transaction-based pricing for our products, or is it user-based?
Thank you for the question. We are using both. I mean, we are using transaction-based pricing as well as user-based pricing. I think it's— Hello? Can you hear me?
No. Hello?
Hello?
Yeah.
You are audible now?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, I'm saying just to answer your question, our pricing model consists of both transaction-based as well as user-based pricing. There are other variants of this model. Yeah, it's a mix of some two, three models which are prevalent in the industry.
Okay. With AI adoption, you don't think that we will go fully based on transaction-based model anymore?
As I mentioned, our AI capability is going to cut across all the product lines. It is going to add another layer of value to our customers and customers and customers, right? I mean, we do not see that we are going to work on a very specific kind of a commercial model for AI. It is going to cut across, and then it could be, again, a variant of mix. It could be transaction. It could be some license-based pricing. It could be a mix of things. Since the AI part, the AI use cases, is expected to enhance product capability for a given domain, in that case, AI-assisted capability will, of course, add the pricing portion to it. In a way, what you would expect, the answer is yes.
Okay. Thank you. I have another question. Price revision is being negotiated with how many clients? I mean, the number.
Generally, as a practice, we do not give very specific numbers. As we mentioned in our last quarterly investor call, we have done pricing re-baselining for most of our customers. I think that exercise is already done by now. If you have anything further, if you want, I can support you.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Pratap Maliwal from Mount Infra Finance. Please go ahead and take questions, sir.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. We just wanted a clarification. You said that Q4, we got some milestone-based revenues. I think you pointed out the quantum of the milestone-based revenues as well: 12%-14% of our revenues this quarter. Is that correct?
12-14%. Yeah.
Okay. So X of the milestone revenue, our revenue would have been somewhere around under INR 200 crore?
Yeah. Approximately that number. Correct.
Okay. Milestone-based revenue, this is a one-time thing, or this is kind of something that happens every Q4, every year? Is it of that nature?
This is a continuous flow. We get long-term projects. Milestone-basis is basically on the percentage of the project which has been completed in a year or in a quarter, and therefore, what is the revenue related to that? It is not one-time in nature. It is something which is a continuous flow.
Okay. So it can happen on a quarterly basis going forward as well, any quarter?
Yeah.
Okay. Just on your employee cost, as we said that we had some provision pull-downs regarding the variable pay. Can you just help me understand what would be our normalized kind of employee cost level going forward?
I mean, see, the reversal that you see in our numbers is to the tune of around INR 8.5 crore. Expect whatever number that you see is the BAU number for us.
Okay. So then it comes to about INR 130 crore. That's still, I think, a INR 7 crore reduction from the previous quarter. You said that we are adding employees. I just wanted a clarification on that part.
Yeah. I think there were some other provisions also which were additional provisions. I would say the provisions were made in excess of what this would have been actually incurred. That is one proof that we did towards the end of the quarter as well. The reduction that you see, that's one related to the variable pay something, which obviously is one time, but the remaining is something which is kind of bringing the cost in line with reality.
Okay. Understood. Thanks for taking my question.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mr. Rahul Singh from Aide Search Business Solutions LLP. Please go ahead and take the question.
Hello.
Hello. I have a question about this cash and cash equivalent in balance sheet. So we can see the buyback or a special dividend in near future? Is that possible? Yeah. You want to know? I want to—yeah. What are the plans with the cash and cash equivalent on the balance sheet? So we can see any buybacks or special dividends in near future? We can see that?
Buyback is something which we are not thinking now. I mean, we are not thinking for both buyback and special dividend, at least in this quarter. I mean, we had our whole meeting. We have not discussed any of these two, at least in this meeting. I mean, in future, what we do is something we should decide on.
Yes. I have one question. Did we lose any customer this quarter? Did we lose any customer this quarter? Niklas?
Yeah. I mean, as we talked about the dynamic nature of things which are changing and the way things are unwrapping. At least, in the last quarter or maybe five-six months, we have lost two customers. Yeah. We have lost two customers.
Thank you. That's all from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on the telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. We have a question from Vinay Nadkarni from Hatway Investments Private Ltd. Please go ahead and take question.
Yeah. Just wanted to, because this quarter has been a really amazing quarter, just wanted a clarification on the efficiencies that have come in. You had said that your employee cost of around INR 8 crore has been reduced, but the reduction is almost INR 15 crore from last quarter to this quarter. I assume that the balance is on account of efficiencies. Now, what kind of efficiencies could you attribute them to to reduce your employee cost?
Okay. In my response, Surya here, in my response to the previous question, I actually mentioned that what has happened is we were making provisions related to some kind of employee distribution that we do. That is something which we have kind of pulled up towards the end of the quarter or the end of the year. It is not like, I mean, efficiencies that we are driving in the form that we are able to extract almost 11% more revenue without kind of increasing our headcount much. In that respect, we are driving efficiency. However, when you see rupee to rupee drop in the cost, it is primarily on account of two up or two down of the revenue, the main being one that you spoke about related to the employee cost.
There are some others also where we are carrying some provisions which we have kind of true to the actual cost that we see will be incurring.
Would it be right to say that going forward, say, around INR 122 crore would be your rough cut quarterly employee cost?
Okay. I mean, obviously, I do not want to get into a position of predicting or talking about a number which is related to quarter one number. I mean, having said that, please remember we spoke that we are in the spree of investing in our people as well as our employees. Therefore, on the factor of that, they could change. I mean, I am giving probably a vague answer, but yeah, these are factors. I cannot give you the exact numbers. That is the issue.
Thank you. I appreciate it. The only other last question is, when I look at your revenues, they were consistently around INR 205 crore. Suddenly, this quarter, it has gone up to INR 229 crore, and that is primarily because of new business attributes that you would have got. Anything that you can share with us on what made this jump come from INR 226 crore to INR 229 crore quarter to quarter?
Yeah. See, it is a combination of many factors which have come into play that makes us happy about this quarter because, A, the revenue has been spread across different customers as well as across different lines of businesses that we operate. Okay? The addition in revenue, obviously, as you spoke, has come from addition of new business from new customers, but even more importantly, the trust that has been shown by our existing customers. They have given additional business which we have kind of delivered and therefore converted to revenue in this quarter.
The last one is the efficiency that we were able to bring in the sense that in the last quarter, the entire organization joined their hands together but delivered their project to the customers in the most efficient manner because of which we were able to deliver the right quality in the right time, which helped us to bring in more revenue as well. It is a combination of all these factors which played their role to bring the revenue up.
Yeah. Lastly, just one question, can I ask?
Yeah. Yeah. Please.
You said you lost around two customers in the last six months. How many new logos have we added in the last quarter and last half year, maybe?
Yeah. In the last two quarters, we've added four logos.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I will pass it over to Mr. Vishnu for his closing comment.
Hello. I take this opportunity to thank you all for your sustained interest in Nucleus Software. I would like to reiterate, on behalf of all my colleagues, our commitment to continue delivering value to all our stakeholders. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may all disconnect.